Having Nick Clegg in charge is like putting Sir Fred Goodwin in charge of your bank. Photograph: Pa

Nick Clegg is the deputy prime minister and in charge of constitutional reform. There has, however, been virtually no constitutional reform since he took office. Voting systems, the House of Lords, reduction in the size of parliament, recall of naughty MPs – all have gone entirely unreformed for one reason or another. Having him in charge is, I fear, like putting Sir Fred Goodwin in charge of your bank, or having Steve McClaren over to lecture folkon "management secrets from the England football team". There might be better choices.

And as you watch him, you can almost see the coalition falling apart, to the delight of Labour members and not a few Tories. But they cannot separate. Like an outwardly respectable Victorian married couple, they are stuck together however unhappy they might be.

At one point the Lib Dem leader averred, "as the deputy prime minister I support the prime minister on the full range of government policy and initiatives". Can you have laughter that is hollow and contemptuous? If so, that is what he got. But as always the real hatred beams down from behind him. Peter Bone, the skull beneath the skin, began by saying, "with all due respect to the deputy prime minister," which let us know something lip-curling was coming. Clegg, he said, was talking "absolute tosh". Andrea Leadsom, another Tory, wanted to know if he regretted saying that there was no chance of getting a reduction in the EU budget – only a few weeks before there was a reduction in the EU budget. Ouch!

He did have some support from a Tory, his understrapper, Ms Chloe Smith. Labour was more interested in her boss, however. They chipped in over the bedroom tax, threatening somewhat improbably that some 600,000 people would be out on the streets as a result. Clegg might have expected an assault from Harriet Harman, and he duly got one.

But then a hitherto little-known Tory backbencher, Gordon Henderson, also joined in. A constituent of his was paraplegic and needed his second bedroom for his carer. But his council rent is to rise by £14 a week "because he has too many bedrooms." With foes like that, who needs enemies?

By the way: astute reader Sara Neill points out that I was wrong to say that David Cameron had been "back-combing" his hair. Back-combing is what women used to do to create beehives. What he was doing was a sort of perpendicular comb-over, a "comb-back" perhaps.

And on Tuesday there was the annual pancake race for charity, fought between the Commons, the Lords and the press. The MPs won, amid predictable jokes about "fantastic tossers". But what pleased me was the fact that it was held under the House of Lords, just by Rodin's statue, The Burghers of Calais, which would make a terrific topical crossword clue: "Brave Frenchmen have some horse in their meat patties, (8,2,6)".

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